But my mother is, and I was raised by people who believed it was something awful and horrible and her fault and we should all be ashamed of it. I know better intellectually, but it's a pretty fucking big stigma for me. There are reasons I avoid considering seeing a shrink about potential depression, and that's a big one. So yeah, it pisses me off, and it hits me hard, and like someone poking at their own wounds, I keep reading people who I know are going to question my sanity, vocally, because I'm not jumping on the Kill Spike Now bandwagon. Because I *don't* think what happened makes him forever lost.

I wish I didn't see "And this means you, Amy" in every post where people are screaming their frustration and anger and rage at anyone who doesn't hate Spike because of the events of this episode. But I don't hate him, and I do see it, and it makes me tired and hurt and just.

Like I'm now never allowed to write anything with my viewpoint character, the one I've come to know from inside, tried to understand his conflicts, tried to treat Buffy fairly as a character, see her values in his eyes, defend her to the slashtwits who make her the Big Bitch Villain, when I personally can't fucking stand her... And I can't write him without bowing and scraping and disclaimering "But this is an AU Spike. I'm not trying to whitewash him. Real Spike is bad and evil and can't be saved and isn't worth being saved, and should be staked now, now, now." And even the disclaimer won't work. It really won't. I'll still be one of *Them* The ones who can ratiionalize anything away and you'd never want to trust us in a room with your innocent kids.

Re: this post and some on TBQ's LJ

No, we're never gonna agree. And no, you weren't ever meant to be the one offended by my initial post, written immediately after the show aired, or by any of the posts thereafter.

I like you, your writing, and your brain.

I am not the paragon of mental health. I am not the morality police. I make no claims to any of these, and I cannot judge you, cause, frankly, I don't really know you. Nor you me.

I just can't wrap my mind around many of the things you say, and seem to feel.

(Don't think for a minute you're the only one who reads posts and hears "THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" in every one. Hello, me too living that now.)

And I feel like I'm banging my head into a wall when I hear that 'Buffy's rape makes her less likable', or that 'Spike had reasons for doing what he did', or that 'since the scene wasn't planned years in advance it doesn't count'.

Yea, where I'm coming from is black and white for me, in a way that few things are. It is this: NOTHING diminishes the horror of rape. Nothing. And to see it bandied about so lightly, "oh it's fiction, oh she's strong, she can deal, oh he can be good sometimes, cut him a break" seems to be so simplistic and misogynystic that it breaks my heart hearing WOMEN saying these things.

I fear for my son, and the world he is growing up in if views like this persist. I am by no means ever personally attacking you, WitchWillow, TBQ, etc. or any of your writing, or your ideas. But .. I can never in a million years ken them.